Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

When Kirsten Neuschäfer decided to compete in the 2022-23 Golden Globe Race, she searched for a fast, safe and stable boat. She studied designs with a good ballast-to-weight ratio, and sought out a hull and rig that could withstand a hard beat to windward. 

She found Minnehaha in Newfoundland and knew that the tough, sturdy Cape George 36 was the one. The quick cutter with a generous sail plan met all of the official requirements—a production boat with a full keel, less than 36 feet long, designed before 1988—and a few requirements she had set for herself. 

“I wanted a super-secure boat for the Southern Ocean, which was fast as well,” Neuschäfer says. “Minnehaha suffers a little in light airs, but I knew I had a good chance of surviving. It was clear to me that the GGR was a bit of a race of attrition.”

Her instincts, along with detailed preparation, hard work and a bit of luck, served her well. Eight months after 16 skippers set out from the west coast of France to race solo 30,000 miles eastbound around a Southern Ocean course, Neuschäfer and Minnehaha caught one last whisper of wind off Les Sables d’Olonne, ghosted over the line, and sailed into history.

“I didn’t actually know that I’d won until the boats came out to meet me,” the South African sailor said of her historic finish. “I knew I was very close to Abhilash, so I was pushing hard. I knew we were very close.”

Indian skipper Abhilash Tomy battled the same light airs that Neuschäfer faced near the end of the race and arrived a day after, taking second place. Austrian Michael Guggenberger finished third, as the final skipper to complete the race in the racing class.

The Golden Globe Race is a nonstop, solo, unassisted round-the-world race with the start and finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne. Competitors are required to sail small boats using paper charts, VHF radio, sextants and celestial navigation. No modern weather-routing software is allowed, nor satellite communication, electronic instruments and autopilots. 

The route takes the sailors south through the Atlantic before heading east to Cape Town, South Africa, and around the Cape of Good Hope. After crossing the Indian Ocean and keeping Tasmania to port, sailors traverse the storm-plagued Southern Ocean and round Cape Horn. The ­final stretch leads north through the Atlantic and back to Les Sables d’Olonne.

Of the 16 skippers who started the 2022-23 race, 11 retired and two others made a single stop, moving them out of competition and into the Chichester Class. Neuschäfer’s victory made her one of only three people to win the race—and the first woman ever to win a solo circumnavigation yacht race.

“Minnehaha suffers in light airs, but I knew I had a good chance of surviving. The GGR is a race of attrition.”

The race is based on the 1968-69 Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, won by Sir Robin Knox-Johnston aboard his 32-foot Bermudan ketch, Suhaili. Knox-Johnston was the only skipper to finish; in doing so, he became the first person to solo-circumnavigate the globe nonstop. Nine others retired, one was dismasted, and one committed suicide. The race was run once more in 2018, on the 50th anniversary of the original race. Eighteen sailors set out, and five ­finished. French sailor Jean-Luc Van Den Heede won the 2018 edition. 

More people have gone into space than have sailed singlehanded around the world. The small nature of the club means that the sailors, while competing, still look out for one another’s health and safety.

During the first dash south down the Atlantic in the 2022-23 race, Neuschäfer relayed to the race committee the VHF-radio mayday call of fellow sailor Guy DeBoer, who’d hit rocks near the Canary Islands. After a night spent grinding over the rocks, DeBoer abandoned his boat the next morning with the help of a local rescue team.

Two months later, 450 miles southeast of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Tapio Lehtinen’s Gaia 36, Asteria, flooded after taking on water from astern, and sank in less than 20 minutes. Lehtinen had just enough time to activate his EPIRB, put on his survival suit, and swim to his drifting life raft. “I gave Asteria a last standing salute as she went down,” the Finnish skipper said. Neuschäfer, the closet sailor to his position, altered course and hand-steered through the night to assist in his rescue. 

“The emergency handheld GPS showed Tapio’s coordinates,” Neuschäfer says. “I followed the track, but it was very difficult to spot a small, orange life raft. I was able to reach him on the VHF, but the early morning light was behind him, and I couldn’t see him. He fired off a flare, and I approached him on a beam reach. He’d been waiting 24 hours and was ready. He threw me a line, and I caught it on the first try, pulled him in, tied the life raft to Minnehaha, and helped him aboard.”

The two sailors shared a glass of rum. An hour later, Neuschäfer managed Lehtinen’s dangerous transfer from Minnehaha to bulk carrier Darya Gayatri, a freighter that had responded to the emergency call as well. “When I saw he was on board, I was just relieved for him,” she says.

Neuschäfer’s own heavy-weather plan focused on mitigating risks and staying true to strategies she’d set. When a low-pressure system approached on her way south to Cape Horn, she set a warp off her stern and held on for 12 hours until the storm blew over. In strong winds north of the Falklands, she hove-to, knowing that beating to windward in the extreme conditions risked damage to her boat. 

By this time in her life, she was no stranger to adventure. Neuschäfer’s early years had led her from South Africa to a set of jobs in Europe, followed by a solo trans-Africa biking trip, where she pedaled the continent north to south in her 20s. Her later experience working for Skip Novak on his Pelagic Expeditions exposed her to the wind and weather systems of the Antarctic Peninsula, Patagonia and the Falklands, and built her familiarity with the Southern Ocean.

“You need a great deal of self-sufficiency on these expeditions,” she says. “You need to know which tools and spares to bring. You need to be able to do all kinds of troubleshooting, refit the boats, change out a propeller, or fix a rig under difficult weather conditions.”

Neuschäfer had also done several long-distance ­deliveries, including taking a Leopard catamaran from the South Africa factory to Australia, and completing a singlehanded delivery from Portugal to South Africa on what she calls a labor-intensive boat. “This, that and the next thing needed to be done, and I discovered that I can solve problems out at sea,” she says.

As she followed the 2018 Golden Globe Race, she liked its spirit of adventure. “There are a lot of reasons to decide not to do something,” she says. “Having succeeded and followed my heart in other decisions, I knew that the GGR was something I should do.”

Her plans were nearly derailed early when she left her boat in Newfoundland and flew to South Africa, and then COVID-19 restrictions kept her from returning to Canada. She was eventually able to get back to Newfoundland and sail to Prince Edward Island, where she spent a year preparing for the race. She fell in love with the people there and made lifelong friends. Several were present at the Golden Globe Race finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne.

For her part, Neuschäfer makes light of the fact that the race dubbed a “Voyage for Madmen” was won by a woman. “I entered as a sailor,” she says. “I competed as a sailor and won as a sailor. On the same token, it’s a male-dominated race. If what I did inspires someone, then good will come of it, and I’m happy for that.”

Neuschäfer clearly has inspired the sailing world. On the final night of her race, as Minnehaha made its way up Les Sables d’Olonne channel, thousands of supporters lined the harbor walls, cheering and waving flares. Neuschäfer’s smile lit up the night. When she reached the dock, a friend handed her a bottle of champagne, which she sprayed into the air. Dressed in her sailing bibs and bare feet, she stepped off her boat and onto dry land for the first time in 235 days, and hugged her mother. 

Theresa Nicholson is CW’s senior editor.

The post Solo Act: Kirsten Neuschäfer Wins the Golden Globe Race appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

In 2013, NOAA announced plans to end the production of traditional paper nautical charts, to the wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth from many mariners. Ten years later, most cruisers do not rely on paper charts (arguably, many had moved away from them well before 2013). Is this a travesty, or just the march of technology and time? What do we do on Totem?

When Jamie and I were preparing to go cruising in the early 2000s, we spent several years gunkholing around Puget Sound with our growing family on board. We had a small handheld GPS, a Garmin MAP76, and a paper chartbook for the region. When we bought Totem in 2007, one of the changes Jamie made before our 2008 departure to begin cruising was a rebuild of the navigation-station table. Although Totem’s build predates the era of widespread GPS cruising, you couldn’t unfold a paper chart on the nav table. We expected to do this. 

The wider table let our West Coast chartbook lie flat. We also removed the slow, small, clunky chart plotter from the nav station. This we replaced with a ruggedized laptop running charting software, and connected to an NMEA2000 network for navigation data. The bigger screen, higher resolution and faster speed added up to a better mousetrap for our primary chart plotter.

Several years later, while we were putting coins in the cruising kitty in Australia, Jamie built a locker expressly for chart storage. Carved out of dead space from a portion of the pilot berth, the new locker allowed flat storage of our paper-chart collection.

Jamie began sailing more than 50 years ago and is skilled at navigating using paper charts. I am a confirmed map geek who finds joy in poring over them. Yet, as the years rolled by, we never pulled a chart from that locker to use for navigation. We did use paper charts for wrapping Christmas presents. We’re not the only cruisers who have done this. 

Tools and technology for cruising have changed within a generation. Recently, I posted a question on our Facebook and Instagram pages to gather opinions about whether to reinstall Totem’s SSB radio. Like paper charts, it’s been years since we made use of long-distance radio communication. Like paper charts, SSB is a tool that voyagers relied on for decades and remains in use by a shrinking minority of cruisers today. And like paper charts, the decision to use it or lose it elicits strong opinions from comments to the post. 

I went to a few forums to see what other sailors volunteered on the topic. “Real ocean sailors would rely on paper charts,” one tenured cruiser said. Well, then! Or how about, “See ya on the rocks,” another person lobbed from behind a pseudonym. Ah, internet. Scornful comments flung by the salt-crusted (or settee potato, hard to tell) to a newer generation ends up shutting down the ability to exchange thoughtful, different perspectives. Both comments are a dissonant clash with the 2023 reality where it seems most cruisers do not use the paper charts they have, and new cruisers don’t see the need to acquire them. I asked on Totem’s socials (find the posts here on Facebook, Instagram) how often folks use paper charts, or if they use them at all—then, held my breath waiting for responses.

Charting on Totem

Our philosophy isn’t chart-medium-specific, rather, simply put, our philosophy is: Don’t rely on a single source. Have multiple inputs and compare them, and most important, use your senses—especially common sense. We apply this for navigation and for weather, and it’s relevant for the SSB question as well. It happens that paper charts have not been among those inputs in a very long time aboard Totem. 

What exactly are we using? We have a primary chart plotter on a laptop, which is running OpenCPN with CM93 charts, pilot charts and KAP files (geo-indexed satellite images). We have two tablets—an iPad and an Android—each with different navigation software (currently, iNavx and Navionics). We are map geeks and will carry a few small-scale, large-area paper charts that we never expect to use.

For folks who love paper charts—cool, you do you! Hopefully you’re finding a way to compare them with other data too—partly for the intrinsic value in comparing different sources and because paper chart data might be outdated. We are astonished by how frequently different chart sources are different in the information or detail about the same location. Meanwhile, there’s a great rundown of the relative strengths of paper charts over electronic, and of electronic charts over paper, on the Starpath Navigation website’s blog.

Fostering navigation skills

Many sailing education courses are based on using paper charts and traditional skills. Do you feel cognitive dissonance there? Don’t! The skills are still valid, but we need a bridge to the tools used today. I sought opinions from instructors, and had a good conversation with Brady Trautman about how they manage this at Cruisers Academy. There, students coming aboard the program’s Passport 42 Lintika may have a chance to learn traditional skills (such as basics of a noon sight on the boat’s sextant), but instruction is grounded in modern reality. Brady noted how sailors accustomed to coastal cruising (where the internet is always on) need to be prepped for a cruising life where charts must be available offline on their devices, and to seek multiple electronic sources for redundancy and cross-referencing. Other traditional navigation skills we discussed still matter—and, they are not locked into paper charts. 

One example of how traditional skills play into digital tools is for understanding the different ways that latitude and longitude are given. A PredictWind tracking page for a vessel shows a given boat’s position in degrees and decimal minutes, such as: 6° 46.652 S / 179° 19.841 E. But the default setting (rarely changed; we see many) for a Garmin InReach tracking page uses decimal degrees, displayed as 6.777533° S / 179.33063° E. Perhaps you prefer the traditional presentation in degrees, minutes and seconds, such as 6° 46’ 39″ S / 179° 19’ 50”. All three waypoints given here represent exactly the same location in Savu Savu, Fiji. Examining a chart, plotting and analyzing your course ahead, and scanning hazards to avoid are equally important between paper and digital charts. Migrating from paper charts doesn’t mean navigation skills are lost. It means they evolve.

Meanwhile, most responses on my post to Totem’s social media about charts aboard were far more thoughtful than what the wild internet offered. In fact, they made me honestly feel so good about how people could share without judgment about what they do, instead of slinging “mine’s the best” drivel. MVP among comments came from our friend Fred Roswold. He has been cruising for nearly four decades aboard Wings, his Serendipity 43 (a custom IOR race boat), spanning from paper-chart-centric cruising into the digital-navigation era. Fred and his late wife, Judy, departed from Seattle with “more than 500” charts on board. His concern today? That mariners become lazy because electronic navigation appears to be so easy. “In my opinion, too many cruisers simply look at an electronic display, see where they are, and leave it at that. Even today, with all of our electronics, yachts get wrecked due to bad navigation.” 

One case for paper charts that must be considered is their value in the event of electronics failure. Power failure and lightning strikes do happen. This is partly managed with the redundancy of additional GPS devices. We have six or more on Totem, with a couple of them wrapped in aluminum foil as an imperfect makeshift Faraday cage. From a backup GPS (without chart plotter), traditional dead-reckoning and common sense (we know from last position, destination is 330 nautical miles away on a course of 264° magnetic), it’s not really so hard to make an approach to a destination with reasonable notion of when you should really be awake to avoid driving directly into something solid. Another case is that you can’t use auto-routing. We have a saying on Totem: FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS AUTOROUTE. We’ve seen the function recommend routes that aren’t just a terrible idea, but they also are boat- and human-threatening. One autoroute directed a crew in two different apps to drive right across the middle of the shoals off Cape Hatteras. As Fred pointed out, it seems so easy.

Paper or digital is not the fulcrum point. The real point is having multiple sources of information and broader fundamental skills. And common sense, which is something Jamie completely fails at when wrapping Christmas presents with old paper charts. They all turn out looking like a crumpled mess ready for the bin. A few of our old charts will still be stashed for wrapping paper, so just as the unused pilot berth was altered for chart storage, that space was reimagined and updated again in this 40-year refit.

We’re coming to Newport!September 14-16, Jamie and I will be instructors at Confident Cruiser Seminar Series: an educational seminar series designed to enhance your boating skills and confidence. Our courses include cruising for couples, offshore cruising essentials, how to make your dream a reality, and more. It’s just steps from the Newport International Boat Show. See you there!

The post  Do We Need Paper Charts on a Cruising Yacht? appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

I came to Lahaina from the south. After 13 days on an unleashed reach out of French Polynesia, I clung to the mast top, my legs wrapped in a death grip. We swung west into Alenuihaha Channel, known to Hawaiians as the river of laughing waters. The sun blazed and the trades howled as 20-foot rollers raced up our stern and frothed over the rails. Flying our heaviest chute was risky, as the channel boiled with towering whitecaps, but the Beach Boys blared from the deck speakers, and Maui loomed ahead in all its verdant glory. Cobalt-blue waves cascaded on the approaching lava rocks of Kaupo. Hana stood lush to the east, with the Big Island’s Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea silhouetted to the south.

I hadn’t been back to America in years, and I now charged full-tilt—unvanquished from the south seas under a swollen spinnaker, drunk on Brian Wilson.

It was gnarly up the mast. The horizon was a sweep of white water wrapped along the Maui shore, with roller after roller that threatened to bury us in the troughs. We broached, like a dog shaking a rat on a rope, and I slammed hard onto the deck with the bosun’s chair tangled around my legs. Our keel broke the surface as we buried the spreaders and spun out of control. All of us hung white-knuckled until the boat shuddered violently and tried to stand. We were a seasoned crew, baked brown and stringy by the sun. We hadn’t dropped the chute in 2,000 miles since leaving Tahiti. The closer Maui inched, the more we felt invincible. Landfall does that. After days at sea, every south sea island is an intoxicating rebirth of the senses, a virginal stirring of the heart. Lahaina was all of that. We had the boat tidied by the time we slipped past Kaho’olawe, into the lee of west Maui and the tranquil, humpback-strewn waters between Lahaina and Lanai.

Among cruisers around beach fires back in the South Pacific, Lahaina’s reputation was as a dusty, one-horse whaling town. I was on the beach in Huahine, set to hitch a berth to New Zealand, when “Hurricane Annie” Musselman, a striking female sailor fresh ashore after a 20-day sail from Maui, convinced me of the fun awaiting me in Hawaii, where I could then catch a boat to New Zealand next season.

In Hawaii, an endless arrival of passagemakers and wannabe sailors from the mainland made Lahaina their first stop. Those flying over never felt the same passion for the place; landfall was the only way to fathom the prize of Lahaina. From the sailor’s eye after days on the open ocean, Lahaina offered seduction like no other, bathed in the late-afternoon sunset sweetened by the fragrance of tuberose and mango that wafted miles offshore.

It wasn’t the thought of endless lilikoi cocktails, or the fantasy of tropically toned women exuberant with song and dance, their hair pinned with red hibiscus flowers and with plumeria leis around their necks. Beyond the fertile earth, fresh fruits, waterfalls, perfect surf, and harbor life of ocean sailors was the stunning Hawaiian backdrop and a celebratory welcome for sailors fresh from the sea, dues paid. Welcome to the land of earthly delights.

Lahaina’s harbor, first seen as mast tops peering over a small breakwall, was packed with working and provisioning yachts. At the entrance lay a weary 19th-century whaling ship, long in the rigging, and over its shoulder was an old missionary plantation home and museum adorned with whaling artifacts and reminders of the invasion of the Hawaiian Kingdom centuries ago.

The waterfront public library next door was the best place to watch the sunset through the palms, and next to that loomed the colonial, columned veranda of the Pioneer Inn, with its red roof, green sides, creaking wainscoting, whirring ceiling fans, open-air everything, and swinging saloon doors with a carved figurehead standing guard. The sound of a honky-tonk piano player pounding the ivories and wailing rousing tunes drifted from the saloon and across the anchorage, serenading us. Just beyond reach of the saloon was the canopy of an enormous banyan tree spreading a hundred yards in every direction. A missionary gift, it had been planted in 1873 by the widow of King Kamehameha. Lahaina, the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, which Kamehameha violently united, became the whaling capital of the world and commanded respect.

Even with its tin-pan serenades drifting across the water and its promises of revelry ashore, Lahaina was a sacred destination for those crossing the Pacific. Its backdrop was a riotous splash of color—a transformative sight after weeks at sea. Lush green cane fields rose up the slopes behind town, waving in the trade winds like a frozen sea. Red earthen foothills, ascending steep slopes to the majestic cloud-shrouded tops of the West Maui Mountains. Lahaina’s low-slung waterfront foreground bustled with green, shanty-style houses and humble shops all the way to the sugar cane mill, where every so often the sweet bouquet of molasses would blanket the town. Most harbor regulars nursed dreams of sailing to the South Pacific and were stopping just long enough to find a berth on a yacht heading south. Bikini-clad gals hawked sailing charters while gruff, unshaven sport-fishermen pitched billfish hunts. Sunset-cocktail-excursion captains, in bright-white uniforms with golden epaulets, recruited passengers. Sport divers in wetsuits hauling scuba tanks joined in the shouts amid the beer-drinking revelries of black coral hunters, stewed in their constant highs from too many daily 300-foot dives.  

Lording over it all, doling out privileges and access like a pirate king, was the leather-skinned, gray-bearded harbormaster. The rest of the town was second fiddle to the workings of that tiny harbor, the heartbeat of the town. Inebriated or not, the harbormaster could make or break sailing futures in this part of the Pacific. Flippant declarations boomed from the breakwall as he stalked the docks, banishing boats from the harbor, relegating them to endless hobbyhorsing at anchor, scheduling impossible departure times, and controlling the pace of work and supplies to replenish desperate sailors amid bribes, favors, and hard-luck tales.

A steady stream of entrepreneurs, street hustlers, harbor alcoholics, and starry-eyed youthful adventurers were always coming and going, convinced that they were at a pitstop en route to the South Pacific. Seemingly every waiter and waitress had dreams of being discovered, landing a berth on a boat heading south.

For many other locals, content with their hospitality and construction jobs, Lahaina was just home. Several hundred one-story houses of all shapes and tropical colors led from the water’s edge to the hillsides by the mill, sprawling neighborly toward the Kaanapali beaches to the north and the Olowalu beaches to the south.

Kaanapali, with its stretch of high-rise beachfront resorts, kept a good distance, about 4 miles from the hum of Lahaina, so their pampered guests could join the tourist hordes swarming town and then return to the civilized world of luxury Hawaiian resorts.

By contrast, many of Lahaina’s simply constructed neighborhood homes had basic tin roofs and green plywood sides, and were smart with a humble pride of ownership. Most houses had flourishing window boxes, and were peppered with hibiscus and plumeria hedges under the shade of towering mango and avocado trees with sweet gardenias, all thriving with minimal care. There was no need for heat or air conditioning, or even screens, in these homes. The streets were alive with locals and young folk making ends meet in town. Dogs barked, kids played, barbecues were everywhere, and bicycles were fine for getting around.

Kids wearing flip-flops and swimsuits skateboarded by the park or pedaled banana-seat bikes through town to the harbor break with surfboards under their arms. Pickups were the vehicle of choice, practical work vehicles suited to racing though cane fields. They’d cruise through town, tunes blasting with surfboards piled high, heading to the beach. Older locals surrounded by their broods of kids and grandkids hosted hula dances and strummed ukuleles beneath the banyan tree, or at the beach or grassy town parks, picnicking to beat the heat.

Lahaina was a tropical mecca of American pizzazz, where mainlanders swapped tales of the South Pacific. With the romance of the south seas under my belt, I was in no hurry to go back to sea, so I ran sailboat charters from here on a handful of yachts from 40 to 65 feet long that swept tourists off the beach for a heart-stopping sprint out to the Pailolo Channel wind line. We got a charge exciting the passengers, shifting without warning from a gentle, drink-sipping 7-knot drift to a rollicking, heeled-over, mai-tai-be-damned 15-knot dash into the teeth of the trades. If the passengers did not seem like they could handle the wind line’s excitement, we sailed calmly to Lanai’s Manele Bay, stopping halfway for a swim with the whales.

The real charter yachts were too big and too busy to handle the daily traffic in and out of Lahaina Harbor, so we sat on moorings off the resort hotels. There was Johnny Weismueller’s 60-foot 1929 schooner, Allure; Barry Hilton’s Alden 57, Teragram; the 54-foot aluminum ketch Minset; the Hermaphrodite schooner Rendezvous; and a handful of performance catamarans, which had the best layouts to accommodate hordes of tourist passengers, complete with midship bars, and could be rammed right onto the sand for loading and offloading. And the charter fleet wasn’t the only thing humming with intensity and tourists: Lahaina’s Front Street, the town’s waterfront artery, was the place to be. You could grab a drink at the Blue Max—a tiny, second-deck bar overlooking the seawall—and discover Elton John playing a surprise session on the piano. Jim Messina might drop in to perform at Kula’s Silversword Inn; Taj Mahal could be seen playing the congas to an empty beach at sunset; and Stephen Stills and David Crosby were regularly jamming aboard their boats at anchor. I recall Peter Fonda’s 73-foot sloop, Tatoosh, returning from the Marquesas, where I had recently shared trails with its crew while hiking the Nuku Hiva jungle. There were celebrities everywhere on Maui, a place where they could enjoy themselves without facing fandom.

One weekend, we filed aboard the square-rigged Rendezvous with friends and sailed to Oahu to hear the Eagles play Diamond Head crater. Days later, we rounded up our festival-weary crew for a quiet sail back to Maui. Getting around the islands was as easy as going down to the harbor and sticking out your thumb. One friend stood at the harbor entrance and hitched a ride on a sport-fishing boat heading to Oahu. He planted himself in the fighting chair and opened his paperback, ready for a nice read. Next thing he knew, the crew had hooked into something. They grabbed his book, strapped him in, and handed over a live rod. He spent the next four hours landing a 750-pound marlin for the first-ever fish thrill of his life.

Most of the Maui charter boats dragged lines just in case. They often landed ono, mahi, ahi and billfish. Once ashore, they would sprint to the best seafood restaurant in town and pocket a few hundred extra dollars for the crew. I recall a wedding sailing charter aboard Minset around Molokai’s Mokuhooniki Rock that double-hooked two big ono. After the wedding party fought and landed both fish, they returned to the dock bloodied, drunk and still smiling, with rave reviews.

The break at the harbor entrance was sweet enough to lure sunrise surfers from upcountry, a 30-minute drive from the volcanic slopes of Haleakala. As thick as tourists were in town, Lahaina’s waterfront shops had to cater to them. Along with its bounty of missionary folklore and whaling nostalgia, open-air bars, dive shops and salad bars, Lahaina sold trinkets, T-shirts, ice cream, Hawaiian-style jewelry, and the sort of faster food that tourists craving the hotel pool could quickly sample.

Around it all were the locals, living a life in the seams of tourist traffic, enjoying a shady beachfront tuft of palms and greenery, sitting with relatives on the sand, eating fish packets and coconut rice on the seawall. The proprietary goods that they depended on were relegated to tired one-story shopping centers on the periphery of town. The tourists came and went; it wasn’t difficult for residents to still feel a sense of steadfastness to Lahaina town. They tolerated the young people who moved in to take their hotel and tourism jobs. Compared with the relentless tide of visitors who abandoned their sensibilities when they became tourists, sailors often arrived with purpose and were commonly the most welcome of outsiders.

The famed Lahaina Yacht Club, host of the Victoria to Maui race and open to all visiting yachtsmen, was as unpretentious as there ever was a yacht club. It hosted none of the functions that typical yacht clubs host; it had no docks, no sweeping nautical lobby. Accessed through an insignificant Front Street doorway, the private club was disguised so well along retail row that visitors rarely found it on their first attempt. Inside, the dark, narrow hallway was decorated with photographs of classic sailboats finishing the Transpac and Victoria-Maui races, and framed letters from appreciative yachtsmen. A basic waterfront bar hung over the water with an intimate collection of tables. Dangling from the ceiling were burgees from visiting yachts from all around the world; upstairs, the loft had a few tables and backgammon boards. I participated in a couple of the Victoria-Maui races, as well as the dockside parties afterward. The bright-eyed patrons greeted us at all hours like heroes returning from the sea, offering flowered leis for each sailor, champagne, and lots of fresh fruit and pupus.

It’s an ecstatic moment for racing sailors, but cruising sailors wear their hearts on their sleeves and their first landfall is like a first kiss that can never be repeated. It’s a taste of wonder and redemption, almost salvation from any miscues of the passage, and a gratitude for an ocean’s drop of grace. In racing, the motivation is victory, the mission is speed, and glory the reward. While that’s a thrill worth seeking, in cruising, the promise of landfall is all heart.

The aching loss for this breathtaking Pacific landfall is that it will never be the same in Lahaina. The sailors will still come, but the landscape and the romantic legacy of a town that was an authentic kingdom’s home, a whaling mecca, a missionary post, and a working blend of tourism and local ohana is gone. What now remains of this legendary alluring paradise is but a barren gray stretch of ashen slabs and ghosts.

The town will be rebuilt and redefined by developers, legal setbacks and the buying power of realtors, but the soul of this Pacific pit stop and the prevailing Hawaiian spirit is at risk. The magic of this mythical landfall will never be quite the same.

Neil Rabinowitz is a longtime and frequent contributor to Cruising World as both a photographer and a writer. His work has appeared in Men’s Journal, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, Outside, and The New York Times to name a few, and just about every marine publication. He has completed numerous ocean passages on both racing and cruising yachts and often finds inspiration recalling the romance of his first south seas landfall. He lives on a sunny farm on Bainbridge Island in the Pacific Northwest. 

The post An Ode to Lahaina appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

If you’d like to buy a ­cruising vessel, I ­recommend the classic five-step approach.

Step One: Decide what type of cruising you’re interested in.
Step Two: Research the market for suitable vessels.
Step Three: Talk to owners of those specific vessels for a reality check and, with the help of…
Step Four: a broker, and Step Five: a surveyor, sign on the dotted line. 

That’s my advice. 

However, I’d be disingenuous if I said that’s how I do it. I look for a worthless boat with a major problem and a ticking clock, and then assist the owner in getting on with his life by taking the vessel off his hands for a token, face-saving payment. 

How to find a worthless boat is easy. It is one that hasn’t sold for a year or three. Just look at two-year-old ads for boats that you’d like to own, and see if the boats are still for sale. If so, they’re worthless. 

Worthless boats are worthless for a reason. Most have a major problem. My double-ender Corina lacked an engine and rig, and had been used as a hangout for illiterates. How do I know? They spray-painted the word “fock” inside the vessel. And they burned parts of the interior to stay warm. As a parting gesture, they defecated in the bilges. Best of all, the vessel was illegally tied up behind a factory on the north fork of the Chicago River and had to be moved ASAP. 

Perfect. I paid $200 for the boat, lived aboard for four years, and extensively cruised the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico. I eventually sold that boat for eight times what I paid for it.

Wild Card, a Hurricane Hugo wreck, was awash on the beach at Leinster Bay, St. John, in the US Virgin Islands, with tropical fish swimming through the cracked hull. The National Park Service was demanding that the boat be immediately removed or they’d do it and bill the owner, an alcoholic ex-stockbroker who’d already fled to Vietnam.

Perfect. I paid him $3,000, smeared the hole in the port side with dried snot (aka fiberglass), and sailed the boat twice around the world over the course of 23 years (at an initial cost of 3 cents a mile). I then sold the boat for 10 times what I’d paid. The buyer was a male stripper who paid with sticky cash straight from his jockstrap.

My current vessel, a 43-foot Wauquiez named Ganesh, was originally listed for $140,000—which, once upon a time, it had been worth. However, over the course of four years, a hurricane had heeled this boat over in a storm trench, a tree had grown between the mast and forestay, the engine had frozen, and no one had bid a single penny toward a purchase for two solid years. And, within 30 days, the boat’s $6,000 annual yard bill and almost-as-expensive annual insurance were due. 

Not perfect, but almost. I offered $40,000, saying, “Only one digit off, right?” We settled for $56,000 and left within the year for our third circumnavigation. 

Amazing? Not really. I just found a worthless boat with a major problem and a ticking clock—and offered the desperate owner a last chance to get out from under its ­maintenance costs.  

Why didn’t I mention my beloved 36-foot ketch Carlotta? Because I built that boat from scratch. The bare hull cost me only $600 in materials, back in 1971. 

Anyone can do this if they’re handy, crazy, tenacious, and married to a masochist who finds fiberglass dust oddly pleasing.

Did I know how to rebuild a marine engine or design a rig or patch a hole with dried snot? Or shape a plank or caulk a garboard seam? Or replace a section of deadwood? Or calculate the crown of a deck beam? Or loft a life-size yacht?

No, of course not. But I searched out people who did know of such things, and I hugged them until they opened their hearts and told me their innermost ­construction secrets.

I simply refused to take no for an answer. When I couldn’t afford to rent a small garage to build my Ibold-designed Endurance 36, Carlotta, I formed a commune. We built six boats in a giant warehouse in Boston. Unable to afford to transport my 20,000-pound vessel, I (and a fella named Momo) built a flatbed ­trailer from scrounged scrap iron—which still might be ­transporting yachts around New England, for all I know. 

At the time, the largest steam crane north of New York City was operated by a cigar-chomping guy who hated hippies—a fellow I had to set straight almost immediately upon meeting him. He said: “Don’t be silly. It costs over $20,000 for me to push the start button. Just the insurance rider alone costs…” 

“You misunderstand me,” I shot back. “I have no money. I’m not here to hire you. I need you to launch me for free.”

You should have seen the look of disbelief and revulsion on his grizzled face. I went back every day for a week, every week for a month, and every month for a year—­always with six-pack of beer, an herbally enhanced smile, and enough Zen to endure endless tirades against hippies, longhairs, and various other social parasites. 

Finally, one day, he called me and barked: “Listen, you little turd. I’ve got a contract in Maine. After I go through the Fort Point Channel Bridge, I’m gonna have a problem with one of the engine gauges. Just to be on the safe side, I’m gonna put down my spuds to check it out. I’m only gonna be there for five or six minutes—so you’d best have your goofy Titanic all set to go along the seawall. Damn, I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

It’s amazing what you can do if you’re tenacious and stupid enough to ignore being told no a few thousand times. 

A friend of mine named Eric lost the roof of his house and his Cape Dory Typhoon during Hurricane Hugo in 1989. His wife was hospitalized with stress. I felt bad for him. He was a good guy. 

So, my wife Carolyn and I went around to all the restaurants on St. John and collected empty milk and water jugs—or, as I thought of them, micro lift bags. Next, I collected all the PFD devices on the island, plus all the yacht fenders for good measure. St. John has a lot of yachts, and the logistics of all this gear was pretty daunting. 

I then purchased a can of fruit juice and a bottle of rum, and I announced a swim day in Cruz Bay. Dozens of folks showed up and swam with the empty jugs, as well as all the PFDs, down into the Cape Dory’s cabin. I encouraged them while lashing fenders from a loop of line encircling the keel. A dozen dinghies towed the awash vessel to the beach—where, at high tide, we hooked it to a Jeep and towed it into shallow water. When the tide dropped, we gravity-­siphoned that boat, and then we hand-bailed the rest. 

By nightfall, the boat was back on its mooring. Half the boats on St. John ended up with the wrong fenders afterward, but hey, that’s what happens when you mix good deeds and rum in the Caribbean. 

Why relate this story? Because you can’t make sizable withdrawals without making massive deposits in the karma bank.

I learned this, and more, from my father. He was the type of sailor who, if you gave him a Popsicle stick and a Swiss Army knife, could whittle you up a handy little vessel in no time. His first boat cost $10. He paid $5 for the boat and $5 for the team of horses to haul it to his yard. 

After coming back from World War II, he lusted after a lovely gold-plater that had just returned from a podium finish in the Newport Bermuda Race. It was a graceful, ­well-found John G. Alden (design No. 213, launched in 1924, ­sistership to Yvonne) schooner named Elizabeth. One day, the boat had a small fire in the gasoline-­powered engine room and sank. Instead of shedding a tear at the demise of another classic American racing yacht, my father tossed a $100 bill in the air and dived into the muddy water of Illinois’ Calumet River. 

Do you know what he said when he surfaced and called for the lift bags in the trunk of his car?

“Perfect.” 

Fatty and Carolyn Goodlander are holed up at the Changi Sailing Club in Singapore, slowly replacing all their running rigging from their favorite international chandlery, Dumpster Marine. Their book How to Inexpensively and Safely Buy, Outfit & Sail a Small Vessel Around the World continues to make readers giggle. 

The post On Watch: Fatty Goodlander’s Adventures in Boat Buying appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

When Behan and Jamie Gifford warn cruisers to be realistic about budgets, they know of what they speak.

In 2010 in Tahiti, not even halfway through a planned three- to five-year sailing sabbatical with their three children, they had $100 left in the bank. Their house in Bainbridge, Washington, was underwater financially.

“We figured that we could either pull the plug and go back, or we could figure out how to make a living out of this,” Jamie says.

They proceeded to Australia, got shore jobs for a year and a half, and reinvented their sabbatical into a lifestyle: living aboard while selling stories, instructions, guidance and a fair amount of handholding to a growing clientele who dream of cruising. After circumnavigating and accumulating an encyclopedic body of practical knowledge, they established a cruiser-counseling business that ­manages to be both inspirational and practical. In six years, under their brand Sailing Totem, they have coached more than 400 clients.

You may have read some of their 2,500 pieces, many of them written for Cruising World, or spent hours on their website and social media sites. Maybe you drooled a bit during one of their motivational talks. Their goal, they say, is to make dreams real and realistic. 

The couple met in 1991 while sailing on Long Island Sound, where Jamie had established a reputation as sail designer for racing boats in Old Mystic, Connecticut. Both recall being inspired by the book Dove, which Jamie gave Behan on an early date. After settling in the Pacific Northwest, having three ­children, losing Jamie’s mother, and getting caught up in suburban mayhem, they realized that they needed to shove off. At the time, their kids—Niall, Mairen and Siobhán (names from Behan’s Irish-Celtic roots)—were 9, 6 and 4.

In 2007, they paid $190,000 for a 1982 Stevens 47 that provided room for five, and enough stowage and heft to cruise anywhere. They chose Totem as a name to reflect the spirit of native traditions, to “look out for us, take us where we wanted to go, a vessel of our hopes and dreams,” Behan recalls. 

They then spent more than $60,000 refitting what they had been led to believe was a turnkey boat. That experience underpins their first, best lesson for wannabe cruisers: “The economics of cruising is one people get wrong often,” Jamie says. Simply put, the negotiated cost of the boat is just the beginning. “No boat is ever turnkey.”

The list of bills can seem endless: haulouts, a survey, delivery—and that’s before any upgrades that a survey might reveal. For the past 10 years, the Giffords have spent approximately $3,500 a month to live aboard. That does not include the $30,000 needed to replace their engine.

The Giffords ask clients to fill out a form outlining where they want to go, their budget and their timeline. Almost immediately, problems show through. 

“People often come to cruising with the idea that they need a bluewater boat: ‘I want to be able to sail around Cape Horn in a storm fighting pirates, so it’s got to be tough,’” Jamie says. “And the reality is that boats have a lot more capacity than people give them credit for. Most people want to cruise the Caribbean, the Bahamas, the US East Coast.”

Behan adds: “There is a lot of dogma around good, old boats as kind of the right, proper boat for bluewater cruising. These boats have problems that the newer sailor doesn’t even know how to ask the right questions about, and the owner ends up in a pickle where either the boat has issues that they can’t manage or they get into a money pit trying to fix issues and never get to go. We want people to go. Our whole mission is helping folks get out there safely, comfortably, happily.”

One irony is that social media videos can make ­cruising look like a Disney movie. But if you hire the Giffords (on a retainer of $300 for three months or $1,000 per year), you start to get the real dope. You can sample a half-hour of their advice for $50.

“[Cruisers] come into this because it looks awesome on YouTube, and there’s umbrella drinks on the beach and all of that,” Jamie says. “Yes, we have sundowners and fun, because we love this. But the downside is that it’s hard work. The downside is passages that are lumpier than you thought and a toilet’s backed up.” 

Their job, they feel, is not to kill the dream but to recalibrate it. And they are talking about more than mechanical stuff.

“I had a crying-out session with a client this week,” Behan says. “They thought they knew what they were getting into, and then they realized they’re in way over their heads. So, we’re brought in to help them salvage the dream.”

According to Behan, one family with coastal experience took off into the Pacific only to learn, too late, that they didn’t like it. Another couple dismasted in a Pacific gale 1,000 miles west of Baja with three kids on board, including a 5-month-old born prematurely. A freighter rescued the mother and kids, while the husband worked on bringing the boat back.

The Giffords have found that a successful cruise rests on a three-legged stool: being financially sound, physically healthy and, Behan says, “everybody on the boat has to want to be there.”

Jamie has no problem telling people he doesn’t think they’re ready, but often, he’ll advise tiptoeing into cruising. “Go and have fun for a while,” he says. “Don’t run off into the deep end of the pool. We want people to have fun and be safe, and not risk the family’s safety and comfort.”

With their own children now in college and working, Behan, 53, and Jamie, 57, hope to wend their way through the north Pacific to Japan, Taiwan, Micronesia and Southeast Asia. “We’ve visited only 39 islands in Indonesia, and there are 16,000,” she says.

You can access the Giffords’ blog and other resources at sailingtotem.com.

The post This Ol’ Boat: Circumnavigators Behan and Jamie Gifford Offer Lessons for the Long Haul appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

When we first left Rhode Island for extended cruising aboard Simple Life, our Island Packet 37, landlubber friends assumed we’d be docking and dining nightly. When we told them we rarely stayed at marinas and mostly anchored out, the wide-eyed response was: But how do you eat? 

This question always made my husband, Joe, and me chuckle. We love good food. We especially love seafood, and I’ve always loved to cook. Cruising and living aboard have only expanded my repertoire. 

When the weather changes in late August, we prepare for our seasonal departure from Narragansett Bay and a monthslong cruise down the Eastern Seaboard to the Bahamas. The goal always is to arrive in northern Florida by November 1, then cross to the Bahamas from South Florida or the Keys. 

As we cruise, we adjust our diet, enjoying crab cakes in Maryland, shrimp in the Carolinas, and the local catch in Florida or the Bahamas. In our Rhode Island home waters, we’ve snagged flounder from the dinghy, foraged for clams ashore, and raked for quahogs (the local name for large, hard-shell clams) in waist-deep water. 

Luckily, our appetite for ­seafood is constantly satisfied. Joe has become a seasoned cruiser and a skilled fisherman. In Abaco, the Bahamas, he taught himself to spear lobsters using a mask, snorkel and Hawaiian sling. On passages under sail, he often snags mahimahi or tuna from a trolling line. Unfailingly, seas are lumpy whenever we catch a fish; why do they never seem to bite when conditions are benign? And whenever a fish is on the line, a brief kerfuffle ensues: Joe wrestles the fish to bring it aboard while I stand at the helm, holding a steady course through the waves and not knocking him overboard. Joe also morphs into a sailing Howard Cosell, excitedly shouting the play-by-play: “It faked left! Now it’s trying to tangle itself between the rudderpost and keel!”

One year, we had a most unexpected catch before even leaving Rhode Island. We were loading the dinghy after a provisioning run when something odd on the dock caught my eye. A closer look revealed masses of large blue crabs attached to every piling. This was a rare sight because blue crabs don’t usually gather in such abundance in Narragansett Bay. 

Quickly, we headed out to Simple Life, offloaded the provisions, grabbed some frozen chicken necks and string I’d saved just for this purpose, and zoomed back to the dock. The tide was still favorable and low. We caught at least 11 of the blue crabs, stopping only when our bucket was filled. We were well under the legal limit, but there was no reason to harvest more than we needed.

We headed back to the boat, spent the next few hours stowing provisions and getting the boat ready to go, and started to think about dinner. Fresh crab was definitely on the menu. 

While living ashore, I’d faithfully followed a crab-cake recipe that was too complex for boat life, with ingredients that could be found only in gourmet markets. Once we moved aboard, I came up with my own boat-friendly version. It has multiple ingredients, but all of them can be found in local supermarkets, including those we use for provisioning. 

The night of our blue crab harvest, I got to work in the galley so we could savor our reward. The crab cakes, made with crabmeat just a few hours out of the sea, were crispy on the outside, and delightfully moist and flavorful inside. 

As we ate and drank in the beauty of our waterfront view, I thought of those landlubber friends who imagined us ­miserably spooning beans from a can, and I burst out laughing. This was living the simple life. If they only knew.

What’s Cooking?

Crisp and Tasty Crab Cakes (makes 6 crab cakes)

• 1 lb. fresh lump crabmeat (or good-quality canned)
• ½ jalapeño or serrano pepper (optional)
• ¼ cup mayonnaise (Duke’s, if possible)
• 1 tsp. dry mustard
• 2 scallions, thinly sliced
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard
• 2 tsp. fresh lemon juice (plus lemons for garnish)
• 1½ tsp. Old Bay seasoning*  
• 1¼ cup panko or plain breadcrumbs
• 1 Tbsp. chives, thinly sliced
• ¼ tsp. kosher salt
• 1⁄8  tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 4 Tbsp. vegetable oil (not olive oil)
• Bibb lettuce, parsley for garnish (optional)

* Or substitute ¾ tsp. each celery salt and paprika, and a pinch of cayenne

Pick over the lump crabmeat to remove bits of shell or cartilage. Set aside. 

Seed jalapeño or serrano pepper, and chop finely. Set aside. 

Combine the next seven ingredients in a medium bowl and add chopped peppers. Whisk well. Add crabmeat and fold to blend. Stir in ¾ cup panko or breadcrumbs, and chives, salt and pepper. 

Carefully divide mixture into 6 equal portions (it might be slightly wet). Form each portion into a 1-inch-thick patty. Plate and refrigerate for at least 10 minutes, preferably up to 1 hour. 

Heat oil in a large skillet (I always use cast-iron) over medium heat. Spread remaining ½ cup panko or breadcrumbs on a plate and lightly coat crab cakes. 

Fry until golden brown and crisp, 3 to 4 minutes per side. 

To serve, arrange crab cakes atop bibb lettuce, or garnish with parsley. Serve with plenty of lemon wedges, and bottled or homemade remoulade or tartar sauce.

Prep time: 1 HOUR, 45 MINUTES, INCLUDING CHILLING
Difficulty: MEDIUM
Can be made: AT ANCHOR

Cook’s Note: For a quickie remoulade, combine ½ cup mayonnaise, 1 Tbsp. lemon juice, 1½ tsp. sweet pickle relish (or chopped sweet or dill pickle), 1 tsp. minced capers and ½ tsp. Dijon or dry mustard. Whisk all ingredients in a small bowl, and set aside for serving. 

Do you have a favorite boat recipe? Send it to us for possible inclusion in Sailor & Galley. Tell us why it’s a favorite, and add a short description of your boat and where you cruise. Send it, along with high-resolution digital photos of you aboard your boat, to sailorandgalley@cruisingworld.com.

The post Sailor & Galley: Crab Cakes and the Simple Life appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

We’ve crossed major milestones in Totem’s refit, and I’ve included the highlights here. But first, a shout-out to the guy making it happen. Jamie is at the boatyard seven days a week, virtually without fail. Refit realities don’t make for sexy social media posts. What is sexy, though, 

is the commitment of this guy to getting the job done, and done right, as we bring Totem into the 21st century.

The work is hard on his body. It’s repetitive. It’s not fun. It’s emotionally wearing. We’ve passed major milestones, but there are days that forward progress feels thwarted. There seems to be a natural law about boat projects taking more than the expected time—at more than the expected cost—and we are internalizing it with our slow progress. Yet, ultimately, there is progress, and it is awesome to see. I’m excited to share the updates. But first, I want to tell you about one of our favorite roles on board.

The Happiness Engineer

Who is your “happiness engineer?” At some point, every boat needs one. Typically, we use this moniker during the transition from land to living aboard to describe the person for whom cruising was “the dream,” and upon whom it is incumbent to ensure that their partner has a positive reality. Right now, the happiness engineer is a role I take on to make sure that Jamie’s laser focus on finishing the refit includes breaks to enjoy life, heal his body and soul, and stave off burnout. Sure, I’m working hard, too—long hours in other roles. But it’s easier to be a keyboard warrior. Recently, I stole Jamie away from the yard for a three-day trip out of town so we could remember what it’s like to be living as travelers instead of refit grunts. 

Getting away was more than a break from work. It was reconnecting to an important way we find our joy in cruising: by engaging with, and learning from, the different cultures we intersect with. The best of those experiences are what I refer to as “walking on the moon,” because they transport you so thoroughly into another world that sharing the experience defies explanation. (How can you effectively explain to someone what it was like to walk on the moon?)

An Indigenous New Year 

A few weeks ago, I had learned from a friend that the Comcáac (first nations people from the northeast coast of the Sea of Cortez—also referred to as Sierra Seri) New Year was in the last days of June. Our friend, Ruben, organizes small-group trips. He planned a trip for us all to witness and participate in the New Year ceremonies, bringing along an indigenous guide to help us understand. We went, and we walked on the moon. From the moment we arrived, we were enveloped by reminders of a very different way of life. Pressed by adversity, Comcáac people have held tightly to traditions and language, and we had much to learn. 

At the ceremony, red, white and blue ribbons, the color of the Comcáac flag, fluttered from bent cactus armatures on the beach. The chanting of elders was carried over loudspeakers, accompanied by the sound of the waves breaking on the beach. 

Blazing sun and temperatures in the triple digits beat down upon the women and girls who wore vibrant, ankle-length skirts and flounced, long-sleeved blouses. After crossing the channel to the sacred Isla Tiburón, a Comcáac shaman included us in the traditional face painting and spiritual cleansing. It was some marvelous moonwalking.

We returned to the mainland to join in the feast and enjoy the music. As sunset turned the sky from gold to purple and then black, the beat of gourd drums, the rattle of shell cuffs on the legs of the dancers, and the jingle of bells hanging from their belts filled the air. We watched the dancers’ movements mimic the deer they represented, while mounted deer heads were strapped to the heads of the Yoreme brothers who were invited to join the event.  

Deep in this moonwalk, fresh artists soon stepped in and worlds shifted. The crash of modern rock music wasn’t that jarring, but what seemed at first like a collision of cultures leveled up into something mind-blowing. The musical was familiar, but the lyrics were being belted out in Cmiique iitom, the Comcáac language. Those same women and girls in head-to-toe jewel tones now jumped up and down, singing along, screaming song requests and Comcáac of all ages and genders threw themselves enthusiastically into the celebrations. 

It was spectacular.

The music capped off a day steeped in tradition, and it demonstrated how Comcáac are finding ways to bring their cultural roots forward into the modern world. Hamac Caziim, the rock band, was founded on the belief that rock music will to help foster an interest in retaining the indigenous language. To our experience, I’d say that they have been wildly successful in engaging more than just the younger generation.

Back to Totem: Interior Finishes

Back in Puerto Peñasco, Totem’s interior work has reached major milestones. We didn’t start this refit thinking we’d resurface the whole interior. We just knew that the cabin sole was suffering in a few areas, that some bulkhead rot needed to be addressed, and that the Formica in parts of the galley had worn through to particle board. Those tasks were addressed, and they made it easier to add on some voluntary cosmetic work. 

We realized that the dinged-up, 41-year-old veneer, the junky headliner, and horizontal surfaces such as the table and countertops would all need replacement. Jamie crafted a simple, elegant solution for the headliner from insulation, thin plywood and alder battens—oh, and a lot of epoxy! We replaced the horizontal surfaces, originally wood veneer, by bamboo, which seems to glow from within, restoring some natural warmth to the cabin.

Suddenly, the huge undertaking to look nice, stay more comfortable and be ready for faraway cruising feels like it’s coming together.

We’ve learned so much along the way. When Jamie first rebuilt a bulkhead on Dogwatch, his 22-foot S&S Sailmaster, around 1984, it felt significant. Now he’s rebuilt entire cabins. He’s learned about fillers, materials and how to apply accumulated years of knowledge about Totem along the way, making her our long-term home, and now hopefully easier to maintain—at least as much as any boat can be.

Want to learn more about Comcáac?

• NY Times: An Intimate Look at Mexico’s Indigenous Seri People
• Video: Seri turtle songs of survival (Spanish with subtitles: Comcáac history in <15 min)
• Video: Hamac Cazíim | an indigenous punk documentary (29 min: the Comcáac rock band we heard)
• Creative Pinellas: Seri Tribe (konkaak / comca’ac) of Sonora Mexico
• Sonora tourism: indigenous people of Sonora
• Mexico Escultura: Seri New Year 

Totem Talks

Our free, monthly livestreamed talks cover topics of interest pertinent to cruisers. Coming up this month: Tools and Spares. It’s tempting to bring everything you might need. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to bring everything you will need. How do you decide what’s essential to have on board for tools and spares? Register here to join the session. Other recent topics include getting sails for your boat. How do you know when it’s time to replace your sails? What is the process like? What should boat owners know about evaluating options? Also, don’t miss our adventures while anchoring. This talk covers key anchoring techniques and discusses how to figure out where you can anchor and how to deal with anchorage politics.

The post State of Our Totem appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

It was a frantic, heinous, 27-hour ­excursion in my ancient Ford F-150 from mid-Florida to Rhode Island via the hideous Interstate 95 corridor. I was in a hurry. It was mid-May, and I’d just laid up my Pearson 365, August West, in Longboat Key, but there were other sailboat adventures on my immediate horizon. First, my Pearson Ensign, Saunter, was scheduled for an imminent relaunch from a marina in Portsmouth. And immediately following that, I was bound for Lake George, New York, with my longtime Newport J/24 sailboat-racing pals to compete in that one-design class’s national championship. I had a lot going on. 

Right from the get-go, my first glance at Saunter after pulling off the winter tarp was, well, disturbing. Strewn about the boat’s open cockpit was a chunky, nasty mess of old Styrofoam, and there was only one place it could’ve come from: the transom compartment abaft the tiller, which had been filled with the stuff to prevent sinking if the boat was swamped, ­presumably before the sloop’s launching in 1963. I checked the pair of inspection ports to see if I’d absentmindedly left them open and was slightly relieved to see that I hadn’t. Whatever had gotten in there had done so through an extremely small cockpit-drain hole. 

That’s when I heard the chorus of ­frantic chirping emanating from astern. Ugh. My visitors were still in residence. 

At a loss for a quick solution, I posted a photo of the foam-filled cockpit on Facebook and explained that it sounded like a nest of tweeting birdies. It did occur to me that a bird couldn’t possibly move the larger chunks of foam, but not before others pointed out the more likely culprits. “Varmints,” one commenter wrote. “Possums,” opined another. “Sorry, man, but those definitely aren’t birds,” added a third. Oh boy. 

I threw myself at the mercy of the yard, saying I was going to need more time to launch, and then I rang the exterminator that the boatyard’s team recommended. “Did they sound like this?” he asked before launching into a pitch-perfect imitation of my unwelcome choir. 

“Exactly,” I said. 

“You’ve got raccoons, my friend,” he replied. “I’ll go have a look.”

It was a couple of days later, as I was driving up the Massachusetts Turnpike to New York with my old friend Ian Scott, towing his J/24, before the exterminator got back to me. Upon inspecting my boat, he had found and heard nothing, and reckoned I’d sent the intruders scooting with my noisy on-deck commotion. “But I’d really like to talk to the fellow on the next boat over to get permission to inspect his boat,” he said. There were raccoon tracks, apparently, all over his canvas cover. 

“Dude,” I replied, “I’m sitting right next to him.” 

The strange saga was getting weirder still. Yes, in a teeming boatyard, completely randomly, Ian’s other boat—a Swan 36—had been stored the previous fall directly next to mine. Permission to board was quickly granted.

For the next several days, we were in full regatta mode, but in Lake George, I did meet a self-professed Ensign expert and sought his counsel. There was no way, save a Sawzall, to access that aft space for repairs. 

Specifically, I was wondering if the next time I went Saunter sailing, I was going to, like, sink. 

“Probably only if you take on a lot of water,” he said. “You might want to think about lashing flotation bags under the cockpit seats.” It wasn’t the assurance I was seeking. 

On the way home, I reconnected with the exterminator. “I found the pups!” he exclaimed (it took me a second to realize he was referring to raccoons). “Not on Ian’s boat. In the galley of the next one over.”

Which, in one final, ridiculous ­coincidence befitting the entire annoying escapade, turned out to be a Pearson 26 that I also had previously owned before giving it to a kid to refurbish for his senior-year-of-prep-school project. It had been covered for the winter, and I didn’t even realize it was there.

What to make of all this? Well, I’ve ­always believed that there’s only one or two degrees of separation in the sailing world, that we’re all connected by waterborne acquaintances just once or twice removed. Turns out, at least from my recent experience, you could say the same thing about boatyard raccoons. 

Herb McCormick is a CW editor-at-large.

The post Off Watch: A Mysterious Mess in the Cockpit Kicks Off a Whodunit Caper appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

I’m cheap but not chintzy. I believe that I can do really cool, really fun things on my boat (for pennies) that make it safer and more seaworthythan the expensive, gold-plated boat anchored next to mine. Plus, because I’ve almost never worked ashore, I whip up these cruising gizmos on a microbudget. Saving money on such projects—and being able to spend it while cruising the world—is really important to me. 

Example: stepping masts. I purchased my first vessel as a teenager in Chicago. It didn’t have a mast. When I finally managed to finagle a Sitka spruce spar, I couldn’t afford a crane to step it. Not a problem: I laid it on deck on sawhorses and drove my boat under the bridge at the Lake Shore Drive S-turns in Chicago. At rush hour (to discourage pesky questions), my father and some friends pulled over into the breakdown lane and tossed over a block-and-tackle. Within minutes, they hoisted the heavy wooden mast in place—and we were gone before the Chicago police knew what happened. 

Thus, with all my vessels and in all my days, I’ve never once paid to have a mast stepped or unstepped. Why would I?

Alas, in the Virgin Islands, bridges are few and far between, but large sailing vessels are a dime a dozen. Thus, just before our first circumnavigation, when I wanted to pull the mast on my Hughes 38 Wild Card, I just jammed her between a Little Harbor 82 named Tala and a Hinckley 65 named Skeets. Both were anchored in Hurricane Hole, St. John, for happy hour. Before their skippers were able to sober up enough to ask me what was going on, I had tied both their spin halyards in a bowline around my mast and hoisted the halyards to my spreaders. From there, it was a simple matter to lift the keel-stepped mast gently out of the boat and lower it to my deck like a Fabergé egg. (Re-stepping it was just as easy.)

Ocean sailing on pennies is just a matter of imagination. I’ve never had self-tailing sheet winches—not ever. Instead, I put a figure-eight knot in the sheet’s bitter end, add two wraps around the winch, and toss it in the water. The drag of the line while under sail is just right—free and instantaneous self-tailers. (Try it. You’ll be amazed. And no rat’s nest on the cockpit sole. Just be sure to pull these sheet ends out of the water before you put your engine in gear.)

Don’t want to pay for an outrageously priced ­bilge-pump float switch? Attach a cheap, ­household mercury switch to a ­fore-­and-aft-mounted hinged toilet-­bowl float. How cool (and ­inexpensive) is that?

Speaking of toilets, I’ve found the ring of bowl wax (used to install a toilet in a house) to be a handy underwater sealant—and easier to use than expensive underwater epoxy products. Mix it with a little antifouling paint if you want it to match. And when it comes to leaks and underwater patching, old-fashioned bike inner-tube patches stick like crazy underwater.

Thick safety glass—­especially perfect-size pieces with rounded corners—are expensive. So, when I built the 36-foot Endurance ketch Carlotta, I used all the windows from a Volkswagen van that I found in a junkyard, for 2 bucks apiece. I’m not sure how long they last—only that they were perfect after 18 years of ocean sailing.

I don’t find most marine buckets strong enough for use underway. Their weak bails pull out. So, I use construction buckets intended for carrying cement. (Some can mar topsides; others don’t.)

Our narrow-of-beam 38-foot sloop, Wild Card, didn’t have much room below, so we practically lived in our cockpit. When we first salvaged this boat, it had typical (heavy, expensive and undependable) wheel steering. It soon broke. I almost fell over when the salesman on St. Thomas told me how much it would cost to replace. Thinking quickly, I asked, “How much for the 2-by-4 propping open your door?”

He gave it to me for free, and it worked perfectly during our first circumnavigation. This solution had the added advantage that tillers are superior to (faster to react than) wheels when coupled to a self-steer gear such as our Monitor. 

Since we almost never steer anyway, for our second circumnavigation, I mounted two tillers: a rigid one aft and a hinged one that could point either fore or aft. The aft racing one was where I could attach my Monitor windvane; the ­forward-facing tiller was hinged so that it could nestle in the aft-facing one, leaving our cockpit tiller-free and much more sensuous. Plus, we were able to incorporate a folding cockpit table—perfect for our food fiestas as well.

Of course, when one of our Nicro Fico ventilators (white with red insides) got snatched overboard during a spinnaker hoist, I replaced both vents on my dorades with stylish PVC plumbing elbows. They turned out to be better at scooping in air, and they’re great ­conversation starters. 

Toward the end of our first circumnavigation, something heavy flying around our cockpit shattered our steering ­compass. So, during our second circumnavigation, we used a ball automotive compass with a suction cup, designed for the inside of windshields. It was hardly perfect, but hey, why get uptight? I could have postponed my second circumnavigation, but I’m happy to say that I didn’t.

The insides of the galley cabinets aboard Carlotta were kind of funny. To save money, I used exterior plywood from billboards that had blown down during a Boston windstorm. In the galley, if my wife opened a cabinet to grab a can of soup, the eye of the Marlboro Man stared back at her.

No, I never throw away old fenders. I slice them up for rubber gaskets, vibration dampeners and other uses. My spreader lights aren’t marine; they’re underwater fountain lights that cost $3 each and have worked for 20-plus years now. 

Ditto my nonmarine windspeed meter. I use the ones that are a quarter of the price and last two or three times as long as the marine units.

Sure, modern depth meters are a marvel, but Joshua Slocum, Capt. Cook and Ferdinand Magellan used sounding leads that, if “armed” with wax, bring up a sample of the bottom as well. 

I’m a big believer in slowing drogues. But don’t tell anyone that the drag devices I use most often look suspiciously like fenders. They’re strung together in series as the breeze increases. 

Yes, I have a nylon Para-Tech sea anchor. But it must be kept damp after use and rinsed repeatedly with fresh water afterward to prevent weakening by salt crystals. Thus, I also use a plywood sea anchor/slowing device designed by Fredric A. Fenger in the 1920s. I find it more convenient to deploy during smaller, friendlier gales. (See my book Creative Anchoring for more details and dimensions.) Oh, and Fenger’s The Cruise of the Diablesse is my all-time favorite cruising yarn, always kept right next to Slocum’s Sailing Alone Around the World on my bookshelf. 

Some mechanical things never die. For instance, our Pfaff sewing machine from Germany has been in various bilges for more than 50 years and still sounds like a Rolls-Royce. Since voltage converters are expensive, we swap out electric motors from any old Singer as we change voltages. (Currently we have two inverters—one for 110 and the other for 220, so, problem solved.)

Portable, battery-operated drills are popular. I like them because they won’t electrocute you if you fall into the drink with one in your hand. With a little imagination, they can be used for many things, such as electric fishing reels while trolling. A friend made a little gearbox to allow his Ryobi grinder/buffer to hoist up the mainsail on his trimaran. Hats off, dude!

While I’d never be so cheap as to recommend replacing the long run of marine-grade battery cable that feeds the anchor windlass with nonmarine welding cable, I have done it in a pinch to reach the next port with a marine electrical supply. 

We’ve lived almost exclusively in the tropics and would never want air ­conditioning aboard. We do, however, have three different wind scoops, including a light-air one with big shoulders (­hurricane-force belowdecks) and a ­narrower one for warm gales. We also have numerous custom-sewn splash guards that allow our hatches to stay open, even in rough conditions while at sea.

Need funnels of different sizes? Then don’t throw away single-use plastic ­bottles. Use them and your glue gun to adapt their screw caps to perform many, many custom functions. 

And, think about diapers. Recently, to prevent an oil-leaking transmission from staining the bilge and polluting the harbor, I diapered it so that the bilge would stay fresh until its rear seal could be replaced. 

Need to have a small lumberyard aboard to carry wood for special projects? Your boat already has one. Cut the plywood an eighth of an inch smaller than the sides and back of your hanging locker, and you’d never know that the spare wood is there. Another hint: I used a beachcombed piece of PVC pipe fastened to the underside of my deck in the cockpit locker as my “long locker” where I stow wooden dowels, threaded rod, spare stanchions, extra sail track and more.

Ever been aground and needed to attract attention from a distant passing freighter? I fly the box kite I carry in my life-raft supplies with flashing CDs for a tail. It flashes far brighter than any strobe. You can also use a hand mirror to signal a passing vessel if you don’t mind aiming it and don’t require the elevation of a kite. 

Have permission to put down a heavy mooring but don’t have much money? Wrap some rebar around a large eye bolt, and then suspend it and some chicken wire just below the rim of a 55-gallon drum from your dinghy. Fill the drum with any steel or rocks hanging about, and then pour in concrete. If you want to gild the lily, add three cheap sand screws and a few spare anchors on some heavy chain. You can hold the Queen Mary for the cost of peanuts.

Need a fast dinghy for one? I built a super-lightweight dinghy out a single sheet of door-skin plywood, and it lasted for years. It was too tippy for drunks, although I’ve found that anytime you wrestle with whiskey in a dinghy, you lose.

If you’re worried that your expensive RIB might go on a walkabout with a snapped (or more likely, improperly tied) painter, then you can leave an Apple AirTag tracker in it. Where I’m currently anchored in Southeast Asia, that would mean 6 million folks would be helping you locate it 24/7, through Apple’s Find My network.

Can’t afford an electric autopilot, and have only a windvane? Rig a cheap tiller pilot to the upper vane of your windvane, and live happily ever after. That’s what I did on Wild Card. It worked perfectly during two circumnavigations. Was it as a good as a $6,000 unit? No, but it sufficed and barely used any 12-volts because all the muscle was supplied by my vessel moving through the water. 

If you’re worried that your expensive RIB might go on a walkabout with a snapped ­painter, you can leave an Apple AirTag ­tracker in it.

Could I go on for another 350 pages? Sure, and I do in my books. But for now, that’s a taste of what a handy circumnavigator with empty pockets and a vivid imagination can pull off. 

There’s a difference between a well-funded, two-year around-the-world voyage and a work-as-you-relax circumnavigation. On my first circumnavigation, I set out with $5,000. On my second, I had $800. In my experience, DIY sailors tend to spend more time in exotic locales and have more fun networking with the locals to save money than their more-well-heeled, rushing-to-finish counterparts. Each to his own, of course.

Currently on his fourth circumnavigation, Cap’n Fatty was raised aboard an Alden schooner and never grew up. He’s lived aboard boats for 63 years and has authored a dozen books on the subject.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Opinions expressed in this column are the author’s own, are intended to be satirical in nature, and do not necessarily represent those of Cruising World.

The post On Watch: Fatty Goodlander Dabbles in Imaginative DIY appeared first on Cruising World.

Special delivery: Sign up for the free Cruising World email newsletter. Subscribe to Cruising World magazine for $29 for 1 year and receive 3 bonus digital issues.

Newport, R.I. – The National Sailing Hall of Fame announced Thursday 10 sailors comprising its 13th class of inductees. The Class of 2023 includes:

• Elwood Widmer “Skip” Etchells – Known as a superb athlete, Etchells’ long career has left an enduring legacy. After building destroyers and icebreakers for the U.S. Navy in World War II, he founded his own boatbuilding company, the Old Greenwich Boat Company, and became a noted builder of hundreds of extremely competitive boats. His philosophy was to deliver high-quality workmanship, with his company’s tagline “Built Like a Yacht.”
• Peter Holmberg – One of the most famous sailors in the Caribbean, Holmberg is known for his skills at all levels of racing, from the Finn Class to Maxis to J Class yachts. He won a Silver Medal in the International Finn Class in the 1988 Olympic Games, the first medal for the U.S. Virgin Islands by an athlete in any sport. Since then, he has been crew on three America’s Cup teams, four Heineken Regattas, eight International Rolex Regattas, eight BVI Spring Regattas and overall winner in three Antigua Race Weeks.
• Sally Honey – A champion sailor, Honey has spent her career contributing to the sport in every capacity from sailmaking to educating on safety at sea. She was twice named Rolex’s Yachtswoman of the Year in 1973 and 1974. One of her groundbreaking achievements was leading an all-women’s crew in the Transpacific Race in 2005. Her most recent inspiring victory was winning the 2022 Newport to Bermuda Race with her husband Stan Honey (HOF Class of 2012) aboard their 56-year old Cal 40.

• John Kolius – A natural, gifted sailor from a young age, he has been a professional sailmaker, sailor and coach. He and his team won a silver medal for the USA in the 1976 Summer Olympics. He continued racing at a high level, winning the J24 World Championships in 1979 and 1981. In 1983, he was named skipper of the two-time America’s Cup defender Courageous and in 1987 America II. Kolius worked with Paul Cayard on the Il Moro di Venezia challenge in 1992 and was a coach for the all-women’s team on Mighty Mary in 1995. He tried to win the Cup one more time as head of Aloha Racing in 2000. In 2002, he returned to racing a Sunfish and finished second in the World Championship at the age of 51.
• William “Bill” Lapworth – Lapworth was one of the first naval architects to successfully embrace the boat building industry’s change from wood to fiberglass. His long career in marine engineering and naval architecture resulted in a line of keelboat one designs built for downwind speed. Teaming up with Jack Jensen, Jensen Marine started building the veritable Cal 20s in 1961. Cal Yachts are still a popular design to this day. A Cal 40 won the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit in February 1964; a fleet of Cal 40s raced the Congressional Cup for many years off Long Beach, California; a Cal 40 won the 2006 Newport to Bermuda Race and in 2022 the Honeys won the Newport to Bermuda Race in their Cal 40.

• John Knox Marshall – A lifelong racer, Marshall earned a bronze medal in the 1972 Olympic Games. He was the mainsail trimmer aboard Intrepid for the America’s Cup Defender Trials in 1974, Enterprise in 1977, Freedom in 1980 and was part of the crew aboard Liberty in 1983 that lost to Australia II. The loss inspired Dennis Conner, Malin Burnham and Marshall to mount a challenge to bring the Cup to San Diego in 1988 and Marshall was the design coordinator for Stars & Stripes. He served as president of North Sails for many years, and upon his retirement there, became president of Hinckley Yachts.
• Charles “Charley” Morgan – Enthusiastic, inquisitive and industrious, Morgan spent his long career making sails, flying airplanes, designing and building boats with his Morgan Yacht Corporation. Many of the over 1,000 Morgan Out Island series cruising yachts are still on the water today. He designed, built, made the sails for, managed and skippered Heritage for the 1970 America’s Cup Defense Trials, losing to Intrepid. In addition, Morgan built several of the water-based exhibits for Disney World.
• Robert “Bob” Perry – As someone who notes that his hobby became his occupation, Perry has focused for decades on designing comfortable, attractive and easy-to-sail yachts. Perry has designed yachts for Tayana, Cheoy Lee, Valiant, Baba, Ta Shing, Hans Christian Yachts, Islander, Passport, Pacific Seacraft and Saga. His expertise is apparent by his courses in yacht design at Evergreen State College in Washington and his boat reviews published in sailing magazines for more than 40-years.

• Richard “Dick” Stearns, III – A highly skilled racing sailor and innovator, Stearns was part of the team that won the International Star Class World Championship in 1962 and in 1964 earned a Silver Medal at the Tokyo Olympic Games. In 1963, Stearns and crew won a Gold Medal in the Pan American Games. Adding to his accomplishments, Stearns won two Tartan 10 North American Championships and competed in 53 Chicago to Mackinac Island Races, winning in 2000 aboard his 35-year-old Cal 40. He served on the U.S. Olympic Yachting Committee in 1968,1972 and 1976 and coached for American teams those years. As an innovator, he pioneered the use of “crosscut” sails using Dacron and Orlon fabrics after purchasing Murphy & Nye Sailmakers and with two of his past crew, Gary Comer and Buck Halperin, founded the Lands’ End company, originally to sell equipment for sailboats. 
• The 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient is Tim Hogan, who has been the president of the Interscholastic Sailing Association since 2005 and has championed their causes for almost two decades. He and his team virtually doubled the roster of high school teams over the past 20 years, allowing more young sailors to take their skills into their adult lives. A three-time All American Sailor and successful offshore yacht-racer, he says that his greatest accomplishment is instilling a love for sailing in his four children.

 
“We’re immensely proud of our inductees this year, as they represent everything we love most about the sport,” said Gary Jobson, co-president of the National Sailing Hall of Fame and Cruising World editor-at-large. “Their contributions to the world of sailing have deeply impacted and touched all of our lives, and each of them have created a hefty legacy for the rest of us to live up to. We are delighted to honor their accomplishments and welcome them into the Hall of Fame.”

The members of the Class of 2023 join 114 current National Sailing Hall of Famers, all of whom are featured in the Legends of Sailing exhibition at The Sailing Museum, which opened last year in Newport, Rhode Island. The interactive experience shares their photos, career highlights and quotes from the legends themselves. This year marks the 13th year of annual induction to the National Sailing Hall of Fame. For more on the inductees, please visit: nshof.org/hall-of-fame.
 
The Class of 2023 will be formally celebrated November 3-4 in Newport Beach, California. The Induction Weekend has become notable as a reunion of sailing’s Who’s Who as previous inductees join the celebrations to welcome their peers into the Hall of Fame.
 
The inductees were nominated by sailors from across the United States. Nominations were reviewed by a selection committee comprised of representatives from the NSHOF Board, previous inductees, the sailing media, the sailing industry, community sailing, maritime museums, the cruising community and US Sailing. Nominations are accepted year-round at nshof.org/nominations. The deadline for Class of 2024 nominees is January 31.

Nominees must be American citizens, 55 years of age or older, who have made a sustained and significant impact on the growth and development of the sport in the United States at a national or international level in the following categories:
 Sailing – Recognizing achievements made on the water as a sailboat racer, cruiser or offshore sailor.Technical – Recognizing those who have significantly contributed to the technical aspects of sailing. Examples include designers, boat builders and sailmakers.Contributor – Recognizing those who have made other significant contributions to the American sailing experience. Examples include teachers, coaches, administrators, media, artists, musicians, promoters and organizers. 
Nominees for the Lifetime Achievement Award must be American citizens, 55 years of age or older, who have achieved success in sailing and outside of sailing and have given back to the sport in some significant manner. Lifetime Achievement Award recipients are selected by the NSHOF Board of Directors.

2023 National Sailing Hall of Fame Inductees (alphabetical, with city of birth):

Elwood “Skip” Etchells* – Philadelphia, PA
Tim Hogan – Los Angeles, CA (Lifetime Achievement)
Peter Holmberg – St. Thomas, USVI
Sally Honey – Urbana, IL
John Kolius – Houston, TX
William “Bill” Lapworth* – Detroit, MI
John Knox Marshall – Santiago, Chile
Charles “Charley” Morgan* – Chicago, IL
Robert “Bob” Perry – Toledo, OH
Richard “Dick” Stearns, III* – Evanston, IL
 
*Posthumous

The post National Sailing Hall of Fame Announces 2023 Inductees appeared first on Cruising World.